Christina Jewett

Joining us to talk about this and other headlines for this week's HPM In Focus is... is Dominic Anthony Walsh.

He is a city reporter for Houston Public Media.

We're so glad you're here, Dominic.

Happy to be here.

How much can our jails hold? Is that max?

It's a great question.

I've chatted with our Harris County reporter, and from my understanding, they haven't given a precise figure.

But it is about 8,800 right now, and then we see about 1,100 outside in other facilities.

She wrote about it in advance of that.

And then also in the fall, it was Christina Jewett and Megan Tuohy who, Megan Tuohy won the Pulitzer for starting Me Too for writing about Harvey Weinstein in 2017.

They wrote a very critical article about the potential side effects and downsides of prescribing puberty blockers, in particular bone loss.

And people just

I think we're at the point now where we've got a good solid amount of facts.

So, um, the article FDA Found Cyclospora During Taylor Farms Inspection in Mexico was published in The New York Times by Christina Jewett, Alice Callahan, and Caroline Hopkins Legaspi.

Okay.

So the FDA said on, this is last Friday, that it had found two samples of the cyclospora parasite during its investigation of Taylor Farms facilities in Mexico.

But first, this week's news.

So Election Day is less than a month away, and a new survey from my colleagues in our KFF polling unit finds that health care is voters' top cost concern going into the midterms, and cost concerns are the top voting issue.

When asked about their biggest financial concern, health costs top things like food, utilities and rent, and tied with the cost of gas.

My big boss, Drew Altman, whose latest column I will link to, theorizes that's not just because individual health costs have spiked of late, but because health costs are so unpredictable and potentially catastrophic.

They're closing, you know, labor and delivery wards.

They're closing down entire facilities because they see the writing on the wall.

And so I thought it was fascinating because I dug up an article my colleagues wrote last year when the bill was being debated and passed.

And Democrats were worried that the delayed implementation would make it impossible for them to attack Republicans about it.

How convenient.

[upbeat music] Christina Jewett at The New York Times brings us this next offering here in the Bistro Cafe part of West Coast Cookbook and Speakeasy, Smothered Benedict Wednesdays.

It was a bustling Monday morning at a little pediatrician's office in Central Texas.

Children with rashes, fevers, and runny noses cycled through exam rooms decorated with butterflies, planets, and colorful maps.

But anyway, she was not the only journalist who was not allowed in, even though there was plenty of room.

But she wrote this article, along with Christina Jewett, that Kennedy drew $4 million in book advances from publisher who has also monetized Maha.

A new disclosure also shows $210,000 in consulting fees paid to Cheryl Hines, the health secretary's wife, by one of several Maha-affiliated groups capitalizing from his agenda.

Oh, my God.

It's about something much bigger.

Who gets paid to deliver health care? So a New York Times investigation by Christina Jewett reports that US health officials are moving fast to put AI agents directly into patient care.

Thank you so much for having me.

And pay attention to this next sentence, otherwise you're going to have to rewind because you're not going to believe it.

White notes that the Reagan administration created the Office of Minority Health after a landmark report showed that black life expectancy in the U.S. was shorter than white Americans and that black babies were more likely than white babies to die.

Christina Jewett and Cheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times reported today that over the past year, Kennedy has also accepted $4 million in book advances and more than $270,000 in gifts from allies connected to the Make America Healthy, or MAHA, movement interested in changes to government policies.

Kennedy's wife, Cheryl Hines, accepted $210,000 in consulting fees from a MAHA advocacy group.

On a far larger scale is the use of tax dollars to pay authoritarian governments to imprison immigrants from the United States who are not their own citizens.